Some historical auditing milestones: An epistemology of an inexact art;

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Some Historical Auditing Milestones; An Epistemology of an Inexact Art
R. Gene Brown
Syntex Corporation (formerly of Stanford University) and
Roger H. Salquist
Zoecon Corporation
To accept an assignment to write of history is in many ways more foolish than to attempt to be a soothsayer. When one forecasts, the reasonableness of his assertions can be debated but only substantiated by the passage of time, at which point one can blow the dust off the forecasts (if they proved reasonably accurate) and point with pride to such clairvoyance. If the forecasts missed the mark, one can let the earlier assertions rest forgotten unless reminded thereof, at which point a cloudy crystal ball can be argued to have been expected given the vagaries of such a changing, dynamic environment.
On the other hand, a cloudy crystal ball is difficult to explain when one examines events of years past, for there are records, memories, and earlier expressed opinions as to history. It is not possible to wait for the passage of time hoping to receive plaudits for reasonable assertions, or brick-bats, if observa­tions
are different than those subject to historical "verification" or at variance from those of the reader's perceptions.
The historian hopes to make his contribution in one of three ways. Of greatest reward is the uncovering of some new artifact or information which will not only add to the store of knowledge, but help in explaining some facet of our heritage which heretofore had remained unknown and as frustrating as a missing piece from a jigsaw puzzle. A lesser, but nonetheless satisfying en­deavor,
is to start with the known historical body of knowledge and successfully structure some new theory permitting a greater understanding of one's heritage or present behavior. Of least satisfaction is to attempt to order given knowledge in a fashion in which it has not previously been ordered, hoping to enhance the understanding of the past and permit greater perspective of today's moment in history, and hopefully, a better basis for speculations as to the future. It is this latter contribution that we hope to make in this paper, an epistemological ap­proach,
that is, the study of the nature and substance of audit history with the objective of better understanding the evolutionary process which shaped the present state of the art and may influence future occurrences.
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